Bachfest Leipzig: How a City Performs Bach’s Legacy

For eleven days each June, Leipzig hands itself over to one composer. In 2026 Bachfest Leipzig staged 212 events at 30 venues and drew close to 96,000 visitors from 56 countries, many of them crossing the old town between the two churches where Johann Sebastian Bach’s music was first heard three centuries ago. Bachfest is more than a run of concerts. It is the city’s annual argument about what Bach means, built around a new theme each year and shaped by the scholars who study him. Our Bach: The Man, His Music small group tour is timed so that its three nights in Leipzig fall during the festival.

A festival since 1904

The first Bachfest was held in Leipzig in 1904 for the Neue Bachgesellschaft, the New Bach Society, and from 1908 the city put it on formally. Earlier editions were sometimes called Bach Weeks or Bach Days, and they were not always annual. The festival in its present form dates from 1999, when the Bach-Archiv Leipzig began organising it every June on the city’s behalf. The archive is the research institute that also runs the Bach Museum across the square from the Thomaskirche, described in our article on the Bach Museum Leipzig. Its artistic director is the Bach scholar Michael Maul.

That arrangement is what gives Bachfest its character. Programmes are shaped by people who spend the rest of the year editing manuscripts, dating sources and arguing about performance practice, and the festival makes room for talks and encounters with researchers alongside the concerts. The city’s long tradition of honouring Bach also predates the festival. Felix Mendelssohn raised money for Leipzig’s first Bach monument in the 1840s, after reviving the St Matthew Passion in Berlin, a story told in our article on Mendelssohn and the 1829 Bach revival.

A new theme every year

Each Bachfest is built around a motto, and the list of recent ones reads like a survey of the questions scholars ask about Bach. Some look at his relationships: “Bach and his sons” in 2008, “Bach – Mendelssohn – Reger” in 2009, and “We Are Family” in 2022. Others take up his working life, such as “Zyklen” (Cycles) in 2018, on the annual cycles of church music, and “Hof-Compositeur” (Court Composer) in 2019. Still others look at his reception and future, from “Bach and the Future” in 2005 to “For Future” in 2023 and “Transformation” in 2025.

The 2023 festival marked 300 years since Bach became Thomaskantor and was the clearest example of a theme becoming a programme. It launched a cycle that ran for a full year, performing his cantatas in their original order on the days of their first performances, with the Thomanerchor and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche. That approach sits close to the subject of our article on Bach’s weekly cantata cycle in Leipzig: the festival recreated, at a distance of three centuries, the rhythm that once governed his working week.

2026: the cantata hit parade

The 2026 festival, under the motto “Im Dialog” (In Dialogue), shows how the formula works in practice. Its centrepiece was a public vote. More than 8,000 Bach enthusiasts around the world chose their favourite cantatas over several months, and the top fifty were performed in twelve concerts in Leipzig’s Bach churches by leading ensembles, among them Collegium Vocale Gent under Philippe Herreweghe, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir under Ton Koopman, and the Gaechinger Cantorey under Hans-Christoph Rademann. All twelve concerts sold out. The winner was Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106, known as the Actus Tragicus, an early funeral cantata.

A second strand marked 300 years since Bach began publishing his Clavier-Übung, the four-part keyboard collection that appeared between 1731 and 1741, with recitals by the pianist András Schiff and the harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. The “dialogue” of the motto ran in several directions. Bach’s music was set beside that of predecessors such as Schütz, Schein and Praetorius, different approaches to playing him were heard side by side, and talks with artists and researchers kept the audience in the conversation. According to Leipzig’s city magazine, around 40 per cent of visitors came from abroad.

Where the festival happens

The two principal churches are still the heart of Bachfest. By tradition the opening concert is directed by the serving Thomaskantor. In 2026 that was Andreas Reize, leading the Thomanerchor and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the Thomaskirche. The closing concert has traditionally been Bach’s Mass in B minor, also in the Thomaskirche. Our article on the Thomaskirche and the office of the Thomaskantor explains why that post still carries such weight.

Around the churches, the festival spreads out across the city. There are open-air concerts on the Markt, events at Leipzig’s main railway station, recitals in the Gewandhaus and in smaller halls, and performances in churches and venues in the surrounding region. Past Odyssey groups have heard a Passion in the Nikolaikirche, a Bach cantata in the Kupfersaal, a programme in the Alte Börse, the old merchants’ exchange on the Naschmarkt, and concerts in the Thomaskirche and the Evangelisch Reformierte Kirche.

Why is Bachfest 2027 themed around the Passion?

Because 2027 marks 300 years since the St Matthew Passion was first performed. Since the 1970s scholars have generally dated its premiere to Good Friday, 11 April 1727, in the Thomaskirche, though older sources placed it in 1729, when the work was certainly heard again. Bach revised it over the following years. By 1736 it took the form usually heard today, with two choirs and two orchestras, and for that year’s performance in the Thomaskirche both choirs and both orchestras played from the large west gallery. Bachfest 2027 runs from 10 to 20 June under the motto “Passion”.

Two Passions, two churches

The 2027 motto points back to one of the most demanding days in Bach’s working year. In Leipzig the Passion was sung on Good Friday, in a service that placed the sermon between its two halves, so that Part One came before the preacher and Part Two after. Bach composed two Passions that survive complete, and each is tied to one of the city’s principal churches.

The St John Passion came first, at Good Friday Vespers on 7 April 1724 in the Nikolaikirche, at the end of Bach’s first Leipzig year. It had been planned for the Thomaskirche and was moved at short notice, and the Nikolaikirche went on to host four of its five known performances in Bach’s lifetime. The St Matthew Passion belongs to the Thomaskirche. Its words set chapters 26 and 27 of Matthew’s Gospel in Luther’s translation, interleaved with arias and choruses by the Leipzig poet Picander and with familiar hymns, among them several stanzas of O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, the melody many English speakers know as “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded”.

Past Odyssey groups have heard a Passion in the Nikolaikirche on their first evening in Leipzig. In a Passion year, hearing either work in the church where it was first sung is about as close as a modern listener can come to Bach’s own Good Friday.

When do tickets for Bachfest 2027 go on sale?

Advance sales for Bachfest 2027 open on 24 November 2026. The most sought-after concerts can sell out; all twelve cantata hit parade concerts did in 2026. On the tour you do not need to book separately: tickets to six concerts across the 16 days are included, chosen from the festival programme and the other music on the route. Because Bachfest publishes a fresh programme each year, the concerts on the itinerary are indicative and based on previous years’ offerings until the 2027 programme is confirmed.

Are Bachfest concerts accessible, and how demanding is a festival day?

The festival says its concerts are accessible for wheelchair users, including those in the historic venues. The physical demand is mostly in getting between venues and in sitting for long performances, often on traditional church pews. In Leipzig the tour’s walking is on mostly level paved streets in the compact old town, and the tour overall is rated Level 2 (Moderate): travellers should be able to manage stairs, carry their own luggage and take part in three to five hours of activity a day.

How the tour fits into the festival

The 2027 departure runs from 5 to 20 June. Arriving from Dresden on day six, the group spends three nights in Leipzig in the festival’s opening days. The first afternoon brings a walking tour of the Nikolaikirche, the Thomaskirche and the Bach monuments, and the next morning a guided visit to the Bach Museum. Evenings are given to Bachfest concerts. From Leipzig the tour moves on to Weimar, the Thuringian towns of Bach’s youth, Köthen and finally Hamburg, so the festival comes at the centre of a longer story rather than standing alone.

How to prepare for a programme that changes every year

Since no two Bachfests are alike, the best preparation is to learn the motto rather than a fixed list of works. For 2027 that means getting to know the St Matthew Passion: its two choirs answering each other, the chorales the congregation would have known, and the arias that break off from the story to reflect on it. It is also worth knowing the Passion’s history after Bach. It fell almost silent after his death until Mendelssohn’s 1829 performance in Berlin brought it back.

A little background on how the churches worked in Bach’s time also helps. Knowing that a cantata once followed the Gospel reading each Sunday, or that the Passion was sung at Vespers on Good Friday, changes how these pieces sound in the buildings they were written for. Our list of books on Johann Sebastian Bach includes Celia Applegate’s study of the 1829 revival and John Eliot Gardiner’s Music in the Castle of Heaven, both good companions for a Passion year.

Bachfest on the Bach route

Bachfest shows something that individual sites cannot: a city still organising itself around the music. Our overview of Bach’s Germany places the festival on the full route from Berlin to Hamburg, and our guide to Leipzig covers the city beyond the concert halls.

Bach wrote most of this music for a particular Sunday, a particular congregation and a particular church. The festival can’t recreate that first hearing, but it comes close: every June the same churches fill again, the Thomanerchor sings, and for an evening a Passion or cantata is heard in the building it was written for.